“So she is pretty and he is rich. No doubt society will judge it an excellent match. I know my father does thus a woman he found intolerable for his son is in turn found ideal for his associate. strange isn't it how it's the direction we are viewed from that makes us attractive or abhorrent”

“They took turns kissing necks and ears and stubbled chins. He had never found or expected gentleness from Tucker, but here it was, his for the asking. His even if he didn't know how to ask.”

“Well, he's handsome and rich and you're living in his house, borrowing his boat. You're his— He's your—" he still couldn't say it. Saying it would make it real and then he'd be the other woman, sort of."Father." B supplied calmly."Father? You mean as in sugar daddy?""No, I mean father, as in father, you know, guy who had sex with my mother resulting in my existence." He was less calm.”

“Oh, wonderful. I killed his father. He hates me. He knows how to make bombs. Come on, Wedge, how does this story end?”

“That same night, I wrote my first short story. It took me thirty minutes. It was a dark little tale about a man who found a magic cup and learned that if he wept into the cup, his tears turned into pearls. But even though he had always been poor, he was a happy man and rarely shed a tear. So he found ways to make himself sad so that his tears could make him rich. As the pearls piled up, so did his greed grow. The story ended with the man sitting on a mountain of pearls, knife in hand, weeping helplessly into the cup with his beloved wife's slain body in his arms.”

“Wisdom and philosophy never found out God; He makes Himself known to us through our needs, necessity finds Him out. I doubt much if we have ever learned anything solidly except we have learned it thus.”